Barbe de capucin ✦

Barbe de capucin

What it is

Wild chicory roots are lifted in autumn, bedded in damp sand in a cellar and shut in the dark; with no light to build chlorophyll the new leaves come up pale, hollow and thin. Six hundred market gardeners around Paris were still forcing it in 1912, until Belgian endive — the same trick, a fatter result — took the trade.

In the kitchen

Dress it at the table and not a minute before: the leaves are hollow and collapse in vinaigrette inside five minutes. Walnut oil or a hot bacon-fat deglaze both carry it; lemon alone leaves the bitterness standing bare.

Goes with

Walnut Walnut oil Egg Roquefort Shallot Cider vinegar

Same species

Castelfranco chicory Belgian endive Escarole Frisée Puntarelle Radicchio

In season alongside

Bamboo shoot Bergamot Bettarazuke Blue foot mushroom Broccoli Brousse du Rove

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